


Bert & Ernie

by alpacasandravens



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Divergent, Dean Has a Sexuality Crisis, Episode: s05e03 Free to Be You and Me, First Kiss, M/M, discussions of sex but no actual sex, it's during that scene you know the scene, probably excessive swearing, this is my demisexual cas manifesto, yes i'm writing fic about it in 2021
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:16:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28708029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: “Never?” He asks. He just can’t understand it. He’d wanted to have sex pretty much since he went through puberty. Cas was older than life on Earth, and he’d never been tempted?“Well.” Cas’s eyes drop from Dean’s face to the table. “Not never.” Dean barely gets a chance to be vindicated before Cas says “Over the last several months, I have realized that I am attracted to you.”How the scene in Free to Be You and Me would have gone if Dean had been a little less oblivious and Cas had been a little more open about why he didn't want to sleep with Chastity the prostitute.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 26
Kudos: 209





	Bert & Ernie

**Author's Note:**

> So I rewatched Free to Be You and Me last week and it made me lose my mind. Then [this post](https://samdyke.tumblr.com/post/639879474355240960) showed up on my dash repeatedly two days ago and I descended into madness. It's 2am, I haven't stopped writing for 4 hours. no beta we die like dean winchester in the cw's batshit excuse for a finale

It very well might be Castiel’s last night on Earth.

This doesn’t particularly bother him. In his billions of years of existence, very few of them have been on Earth. What bothers him slightly more is that this could be his last night, period. No, not might - Raphael is very likely to smite him tomorrow. Extremely likely. 

But that is okay. Castiel will find God or he will die trying, even though it looks right now like he’ll wind up dead with God still in the wind. 

That is what upsets him. He needs God to stop the apocalypse, and he doesn’t see another way out of this. The Winchesters aren’t strong enough to stop the full might of Heaven. And he hasn’t been on Earth for long, but he does not want to see it laid waste. 

He does not want to see Dean consumed by Michael. This is Dean’s destiny, Castiel knows. The reason he was ordered to save him, to pull him out of Heaven and rebuild him. He has been reprimanded for it time and again, but Castiel has grown fond of Dean. He rarely understands everything Dean says, with his every sentence being rife with references that are meaningless to Castiel. But he likes Dean - seeing the goodness of his soul, feeling the way Castiel is strangely present in his vessel when Dean is near - in a way that he knows he would miss terribly if Michael were to wear him.

He is also fond of Sam, who he no longer thinks of as an abomination, albeit in a completely different way. He knows why it is different, though he does not think the Winchesters do. He would mourn the loss of Sam to Lucifer as well. 

So Castiel flies back from Jerusalem, ingredients for the spell that will be his undoing in hand.

“Well,” Dean says after Castiel places the jar of holy oil on the table. “Last night on Earth. What are your plans?”

Castiel had not thought of having plans. Humans have this phenomenon of a ‘bucket list’, filled with things they want to do or places they want to see before they die. Castiel has largely thought of this as pointless for him - angels are eternal, only able to be killed by another angel, and before the apocalypse, this would have been unthinkable. He is not interested in many of the most prominent bucket-list activities (skydiving, he thinks, sounds like a form of torture that people pay to experience), and he has literally been to every major wonder of the world, modern and ancient. Some of them he’d seen be built. 

“I just thought I’d sit here quietly,” he says. One night, in respect to his incredible lifespan, is less than the blink of an eye. And if this night is to be his last, he would like to spend it here. With Dean. 

Dean finds this hard to believe. “Come on, anything?” he asks, incredulous. “Booze, women?”

Castiel is very aware that this is how Dean spent much of what he thought would be his final year. It is a good thing for him that overindulging in alcohol and sexual intercourse did not make him less of the Righteous Man, as there could be no word for Dean’s behavior before his death than ‘overindulgence.’ This, however, is decidedly not something Castiel wants to do. He would need to drink an improbable amount of alcohol to feel a buzz, and he does not understand why he would want to be anything less than fully present. It is his last night alive. Wherever angels go after they die, he wants to remember living. 

And as for the suggestion of  _ women… _

Over the millennia, Castiel has looked down from Heaven and wondered what the humans find so enjoyable about sweating while moving in the same repetitive way with someone they do not know. It looks unpleasant, sticky, and frankly boring. He does not want to spend his last night doing that. 

If he knew the woman, maybe. The act seems as though it would be much more enjoyable if it were with someone he loved. If it were emotional rather than purely physical. 

Angels are not supposed to love like that. Carnally. Generally, Castiel feels that he does not. 

He loves Dean. 

It has been too long. Castiel has not said anything, and now Dean is suspicious. “You have been with women before, right?” Dean asks. “Or an angel, at least?”

Castiel does not look at him. It is not looked down upon to have not had sex in Heaven. Angels, of course, sleep with each other. It is accepted. So is an angel abstaining. As he’s never felt interest, Castiel has never been ashamed of not doing it. Until right now, when the only being he has ever considered sleeping with seems to find his lack of experience ludicrous. 

“I’ve never had occasion.”

“All right.” Something sparks in Dean’s eyes, and he grabs his jacket. “There are two things I know for certain.” His gaze settles directly on Castiel, and Castiel feels seen in a way that should feel like a violation and distinctly is not. 

“One: Bert and Ernie are gay.” Castiel has not seen Sesame Street, though he does know that is what Dean is referencing. He does not see why it is relevant. 

“And two: you’re not gonna die a virgin. Not on my watch.” 

Castiel does not see why Dean cares whether or not he is a virgin. He does not understand why Castiel needed to know that two puppet characters on a children’s show are homosexual. But Dean looks at him again, and tilts his head toward the door while he says “Let’s go,” and Castiel thinks he might get it.

Maybe Dean knows that Castiel has contemplated what having sex with Dean would be like. That he thinks he would like it, that the thought is significantly more enjoyable than the thought of having sex with anyone else. Maybe, from the way Dean is still looking at him, Dean wants to sleep with him too. That might be how Dean can be so sure Castiel will not die a virgin. 

This, he is okay with. More than okay with. 

He stands up and eagerly follows Dean out the door. 

That was not what Dean meant. 

When Dean did not lead him to a bed in the house they were temporarily occupying, Castiel was confused. When they got into the Impala - the front seat, not the back seat where Castiel knows Dean had sex with Anna, a thought that still makes his chest constrict and brings an odd feeling of grief - Castiel thought that maybe Dean is taking them to a motel. 

He was not. They are at a brothel. 

Scantily clad women walk the floor while desperate-looking men fill the booths. The men’s eyes trail over every detail of the nearest woman, lingering on their chests under their thin clothes, tracing their asses. Castiel does not look at any of the women. He does not want to be here.

Dean ordered him a beer, so Castiel drinks it, mostly out of something to do. Dean expects him to sleep with one of these women, and he does not want to. He’s terrified. 

Dean’s confused. Cas practically tripped over himself following Dean when he told Cas he wasn’t gonna die a virgin. As soon as they got to the club, Cas shut down. He’s been polite enough, sure, but his eyes stay firmly on the tabletop or on his beer.

He’s probably just nervous, Dean justifies. He’d been nervous as hell before his first time, even if he hadn’t shown it. And that had been in high school - around when everyone was having their first time. 

A girl walks over to their table. She’s tall and blond, and wearing only a floaty veil of gauze-like fabric over her chest and stomach. 

“Hey, boys,” she says, looking from Dean to Cas. 

It’s fake, but she’s good at selling it. Cas doesn’t say anything, though, which is weird but maybe he’s just shy. He already doesn’t talk that much normally. 

“What’s your name?” Dean asks. 

She bats her eyelashes and says “Chastity.”

Dean laughs and looks at Cas to see whether he’s interested. Chastity seems good - she’s pretty, she’s confident. There’s an unpleasant burning sensation behind his ribcage that Dean doesn’t want to think about when he thinks of Cas sleeping with her, but he ignores it. What he can’t ignore, though, is the panicked look on Cas’s face. 

When Dean looks at Cas, Cas flashes Dean the most obvious deer in the headlights look he’s ever seen and holds it, looking into Dean’s eyes. He glances between Dean and Chastity with that same expression on, tense like he’s about to jump out of their booth and make a break for it. 

Shit. Cas isn’t just nervous, he’s full-on scared. 

“Well, you look like a real nice girl,” Dean says to Chastity, telegraphing the way he looks her up and down just out of habit, “but I’m afraid we need a minute.” 

Chastity leaves, flouncing away to another table that will be more willing to pay for her time. 

“What’s up, buddy?” Dean asks. He’s worried - this is Cas’s last night on Earth, and he’s fucking it all up. 

Cas taps his fingers on the side of his beer. “I shouldn’t be here,” he says.

“‘Cause you’re an angel?” Dean asks. “You rebelled! That gives you total right to take advantage of what Earth’s got to offer.” 

“No, Dean. I mean…” Cas trails off, and Dean watches him wage some kind of internal war. When his eyes refocus on Dean instead of some point in the distance, he says “This isn’t what I thought you meant. When you said I wasn’t going to die a virgin.” 

What the hell else would Dean have meant? There is absolutely zero chance Cas could pick someone up at a bar, because however cool (he refuses to let himself think ‘endearing’) it is when Cas talks about the life cycle of a honeybee or whatever, that is not what chicks are into. So, brothel.

“You have to understand, Dean,” Cas says, “Heaven doesn’t have the same stigma associated with virginity as Earth.”

No shit. Dean might not be a good Christian, what with actively pissing off an archangel every second of his existence, but he sure knew that people who  _ were _ weren’t too thrilled with sex as a concept. Something to do with corruption and sins of the flesh, blah, blah. 

“Yeah, purity is next to godliness or whatever.” At least his dad hadn’t been one of those parents. He just told Dean to use protection and minded his own business.

Cas wrinkles his eyebrows slightly. “Heaven does not care about the sexual status of its souls,” he says like this should be obvious. “And its angels do not distinguish between those who have had sex and those who have not.”

Dean’s struggling to catch up. If Cas has been alive for millions of years, and there’s no ‘angels can’t have sex’ rule, why the hell hasn’t he?

When he asks that, though, Cas’s eyebrows just wrinkle more. “Why would I?”

“Because.” Dean has never been put in a position like this before. Before right now, he thought that sex was just something everybody wanted to do. “Because you want to? It’s fun?”

“I have never wanted to, so I haven’t.” 

They’re in a brothel. Dean brought Cas to a fucking brothel and apparently Cas has never in his life wanted to have sex. Jesus Christ.

“Never?” He asks. He just can’t understand it. He’d wanted to have sex pretty much since he went through puberty. Cas was older than life on Earth, and he’d never been tempted?

“Well.” Cas’s eyes drop from Dean’s face to the table. “Not never.” Dean barely gets a chance to be vindicated before Cas says “Over the last several months, I have realized that I am attracted to you.”

Dean freezes in his seat. Cas had just said that, like it was nothing. That Cas. Was attracted to him. Is attracted to him. That Cas, his best friend who he just tried to hook up with a fucking prostitute, is attracted to him. And only him.

“What the fuck,” he says. 

“Should I not have said that?” Cas says.

Dean digs in his pocket for his wallet. “It’s fine,” he says, dropping money on the table for their drinks. “It’s fine.” He walks as fast as possible toward the exit. 

“Did I do something wrong?” Cas asks as he leaves. 

It’s cold outside, especially after the artificial warmth inside the club. Dean can see his breath as he paces in the club’s shitty back alley, hands shoved in the pockets of his coat. He has a swiss army knife in there, and he runs his thumb over the closed back of the blade. 

How the hell is this his life. Cas is gonna die tomorrow. At sunrise they’ll summon Raphael and maybe get directions to God (who Dean still can’t believe he’s searching for - he barely even believes he exists) and almost definitely get Cas blasted into a million little pieces. And as if that wasn’t enough, Dean definitely ruined Cas’s last night by trying to set him up with some girl when apparently literally the only being Cas had ever wanted to fuck in his millions of years is Dean. 

There’s so much to process. Apparently, angels can be gay. Or whatever Cas is. Not straight, that’s for sure. But Dean’s not gay. He’s never even looked at a man like that. Which means Cas picked the worst person to like. He’s a terrible fucking person, and there’s no chance of him reciprocating, and Cas who deserves everything good in the goddamn world picked him. Because apparently being an angel doesn’t give someone good taste. 

He can’t think about it, one thought after another popping into his head and being shoved out before he can even process it. So he paces and watches his breath cloud in the air and pushes his thumb into the side of his swiss army knife in silence. 

Dean doesn’t know how long it’s been when Cas comes to find him. Probably only five or ten minutes, but it feels like hours. 

“Dean?” Cas says hesitantly from the end of the alley. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Dean lies. 

“Are you sure?” Cas walks closer, and Dean can see the concern painted all over his face. Christ, Cas is the one that’s gonna die, what’s he doing concerned about Dean? “You left very abruptly.” 

Dean stops pacing. “Did you mean it?”

Cas tilts his head to the side, and it makes Dean feel… something. “Mean what?”

“What you said in there.” Dean can’t meet Cas’s eyes. “That you’re, uh, attracted to me.”

“Oh. Yes.” Cas says this like it’s the easiest thing in the world. 

“In what way?” Dean does not want to know the answer. 

“Primarily romantically, though also sexually.”

“Jesus,” Dean says. 

With a perfectly straight face, Cas says “I don’t see what Jesus has to do with it.” 

Dean’s not sure whether that was a genuine comment or Cas’s idea of a joke, but he doesn’t smile. He can’t. Everything is just too much. 

“You can’t just say shit like that, Cas.” 

“But you asked.” 

Dean sighs. “I’m not gay,” he says.

Cas nods like he is absorbing new information. “Your experience of sexuality seems to differ considerably from mine, yes.” 

“No, that means I don’t… I’m not attracted to,” he waves a hand up and down, vaguely referring to Cas’s body, “men.”

“I am not a man,” Cas says. “I am an angel.” 

“I know that.” 

Dean stands in silence, waiting for Cas to say something. He doesn’t have anything else to say. Cas likes him, he doesn’t like Cas like that, end of story. Except Cas stands in front of him, clearly waiting for Dean to say something, so Dean says “Let’s go, it’s fucking freezing.” 

Not long later, in the Impala, they are driving back to the abandoned house they’re camping in for the night. Dean never turned the radio on, and Cas has been content to stare out the window into the night. Dean wishes Sam were here - it wouldn’t be so awkward, wouldn’t be so damn quiet. 

He drives in silence until he can’t anymore - maybe ten minutes. 

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Cas takes a moment to respond. “I was unsure you would appreciate knowing of my feelings.”

Dean doesn’t blame him. Now that he knows, he sure as hell isn’t being appreciative. Somewhere in the back of his mind he feels bad about that, but he’s quashing that guilt with the knowledge that Cas knew he was a shitty person when they met and he should have expected this.

“Not about that,” he says. “When I said I was gonna get you laid. Why didn’t you say you don’t like girls?”

He’s not looking at Cas, but Dean knows from his tone he’s doing that thing where his eyebrows come together and his nose wrinkles just a bit when he’s confused. “I don’t have any particular problem with women.”

“Dude. You just said you’d never been attracted to one.” If Dean wanted to encourage Cas’s feelings, he shouldn’t call him dude. He doesn’t think he wants to encourage them, but he’s curious. He wants to understand.

With a casualness that nearly blows Dean out of the water, Cas says “I’d never been attracted to a man before, either. I think if I was in love with a woman, I would be attracted to her.” 

Dean takes a deep breath and clenches his fingers on the steering wheel. “So you’re attracted to people you’re in love with.” 

He doesn’t know why he cares. He doesn’t want to care. He doesn’t want Cas to be in love with him. 

“Yes.” 

“And you’re attracted to me.” 

“I already told you this, Dean.” 

“But you are.” 

Cas is infinitely patient. “Yes.” 

“So,” Dean says, staring at the road, where they’re approaching the house, “you’re in love with me.” 

“I thought that was obvious,” Cas says. 

Dean considers himself lucky he doesn’t crash the Impala right then and there. He just pulls up to the curb by their place of temporary residence and fumbles to unlock his door. “You picked a shit guy,” he says as he gets out of the car. “Woulda had more fun with one of the girls.”

Cas stands on the other side of the car. Dean doesn’t ask why Cas drove back with him when he could just as easily have flown. “I enjoy spending time with you,” Cas says. “You are a good man, and your soul is beautiful.” 

Cas turns and walks into the house, leaving Dean standing on the pavement. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that? 

Nearly an hour later, despite Dean’s earlier complaint about the temperature, he still has not come back inside the house. He is sitting on the hood of the Impala, staring blankly at the dark, empty suburban road in front of him, thinking. 

These were the facts: Cas did not want to have sex with anyone other than Dean. Cas had followed Dean eagerly to the brothel earlier. Which meant that Cas thought Dean was going to have sex with him. 

There was another fact: Dean is straight. Straight as a ruler. Into women, not into men. 

The second fact doesn’t seem to matter to his traitorous brain, which slips every minute or so into imaginative daydreams about what, exactly, Cas wants from him. It feels wrong, now, to think that Cas just wants to be his friend. But if it hadn’t been his last night, if Dean hadn’t taken him to that brothel, Cas never would have said anything. He would have been content to be Dean’s friend, and Dean would have been none the wiser. 

But Cas had said that he is in love with Dean, that he wants him, and Dean can’t help thinking about what that would be like. What Cas would want. 

It goes like this: Dean wonders if Cas would be rough with him. He thinks of Cas’s infinite strength and pictures him using it to hold Dean in place, to flip him over like it’s nothing. There is a low heat in the pit of his stomach that is both arousal and disgust. His eyes focus on the stars. Sam told him the constellations back when they were kids, but the only one Dean can remember is Orion. It hovers just over the trees. 

He wonders if Cas would be gentle. If it would be more like ‘making love’ than having sex, if Cas would kiss him like he was drowning. He doesn’t want to be thinking of this. He counts the windows on the half-built house across the street. 

He’s curious whether Cas wants to date him proper, if angels are even interested in that kind of stuff. In holding hands in movie theaters and having two straws in the same milkshake or whatever people who date do. Dean has never dated anyone, not really. He had been in love with Cassie once, but they never dated. Mostly they hung out like normal friends, either alone or in a group, except with more kissing and touching. He wonders whether dating Cas would be like that, too. He pushes the thought from his mind and watches a squirrel run in a spiral up and around a tree. 

When it is so late it can only be called early, Dean realizes that it doesn’t matter. Cas could want anything in the goddamn world, and it doesn’t matter because there isn’t time for him to have it. This is probably the last night of his life, and he’s spending it by himself because Dean is too busy freezing his ass off and having a sexuality crisis. He’s a terrible best friend. 

When Dean goes inside, Cas is sitting in largely the same place he was before this trainwreck of an evening.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says. “Is everything okay?”

Absolutely nothing is okay. Cas might die, and Dean doesn’t know how he’s going to cope with that. He hasn’t known Cas that long, but he’s quickly become a major feature of Dean’s life. One he hadn’t realized he’s taken for granted.

“Yeah,” he says.

“I know you’re lying.” 

“Good for you.” 

They fall into silence, and Dean hates it. This isn’t how things are supposed to be. Things have always been so easy with him and Cas, even when they weren’t getting along, or before Cas made it clear whose side he was on. He needs something to break the silence, but there is nothing. 

“I’m not gay,” Dean says a few minutes later. He doesn’t know why he says it, just that it needs to be said.

“If you were, it wouldn’t be a bad thing.” 

Dean glares at him.

“I’m not saying you are anything other than what you say you are,” Cas says calmly. “But you are the only person who would be angry if you were.”

Dean scoffs. “You’re just saying that because you want me.” 

“I do.” Cas agrees. “I also know that no matter what your father may have told you or you may have told yourself, there is nothing wrong with being queer.” 

At the word queer, Dean’s fist instinctively curls closed. He closes his eyes and breathes slowly. Cas is still there, looking at him with patient concern, when Dean opens them. He really does not deserve Cas.

“You deserve so much more than this,” he says, voice low, staring intently at the floor. “To- to fucking live. To love someone who isn’t a goddamn mess.”

“I made my choices. I will never blame you for not reciprocating my feelings, and if I was not all right with dying, I would not be attempting this.”

Dean doesn’t reciprocate, so he doesn’t know why hearing Cas say that feels so wrong. 

“I’m not okay with you dying.” 

Cas’s voice is cold when he says “That’s not a choice you get to make.” 

“I’m not gonna stop you,” Dean says. “You say we summon Raphael, we summon Raphael. All I’m saying is I don’t want you to die.” 

Cas nods, seemingly satisfied with Dean’s response. 

“It’s time to go,” Cas says. “We’re nearing sunrise.” 

What happens next isn’t something Dean would have done under any other circumstances. But this is, quite literally, his last chance. The thought crosses his mind, so he does it.

Dean leans in and kisses him. It’s meant to be quick, a simple press of lips together. He’s not sure who deepens it, but Cas is pulling him closer and his tongue is in Cas’s mouth and he actually kinda likes it. Maybe he’s not as straight as he thought.

“You can’t die today, you hear?” He pulls away and grabs his bag, heading for the Impala and, from there, Raphael. “I promised you wouldn’t die a virgin, and I still gotta keep my promise.”

He isn’t going to be ready for that tonight. Or tomorrow, or next week. It’ll take him months to get that far along in accepting himself, he knows. And the world is just gonna have to not end, and Cas is gonna have to not die, until he gets there. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked this, kudos and comments make my day!


End file.
